I am doing this exercise that Pharr's book recommends: to take each word of the Iliad as it appears in the text, locate the form, and give the meaning of the word according to the model found in the vocabulary.I encountered this exercise very enlightening for many words, but I have stuck with the following contracted words:

δέχθαι, δέξασθαι, 23κλυθί, κλύε, 37δαμᾷ, δαμάσει, 61ἐρείομεν, ἐρέομεν, 62(The first column is the word as it appears in the text, the second column is the uncontracted form of the word, and the third column is the verse of the Iliad in which the word appears.)

I understand the meaning and the function of these words in the text, but I don't understand the contracted form: which contractions have taken place according to the rules that are in the grammar of the book.

Last edited by huilen on Tue Dec 31, 2013 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

δέχθαι is a strange form, which I take to be present, equivalent to δέχεσθαι (middle in form, active in meaning). Pharr apparently takes it as aorist, but I can't imagine how to explain it as aorist. Homer has other comparable forms, which seem to point to an athematic equivalent of δέχομαι (i.e. without the -ο-). That would make it an older form. In form, but presumably not in origin, it's the perfect (infin. δεδέχθαι) minus the δε- reduplication.

κλῦθι (so to be accented, the accentuation being recessive and the upsilon being long)* has the old imperative -θι ending, like e.g. ἴθι "go". (Another "athematic" form.)

δαμᾷ you could derive from δαμάσει by a regular process of sound changes: loss of the sigma (as in the so-called "attic" future), contraction of -άει to ᾷ. All quite regular, but would be unusual as early as Homer. Maybe there's some other explanation.

ἐρείομεν for ἐρέομεν is a case of "metrische Dehnung," metrical lengthening: short vowels are sometimes lengthened for the sake of the metre. Here it may possibly reflect an original digamma at the end of the ἐρε- stem, though I'd take it as a simple case of lengthening of -ε- myself. Since ἐρέομεν can't be fitted into hexameter verse (ερεο 3 successive short syllables), some adjustment has to be made. There's a lot more prosodic fudging in Homeric verse than meets the eye.

So none of these are actual "contractions," except possibly δαμᾷ (but I somehow doubt it). I don't know what "rules" Pharr gives. I stand open to correction on any of this, I haven't consulted authorities.

* In κλῦθί μοι the acute accent is thrown back from the enclitic μοι, it doesn't belong to the verb itself. Why the upsilon is long (in this verb it's normally short) I don't know, but it is. (For the sake of the metre, I guess.)

A difficult excercise I think, Huilen. I don't think understanding the answers is necessary if you're a beginner. And I don't know if anybody really knows this stuff for sure. Homer is full of difficult problems but you don't have to have an answer to all of them to appreciate him (or "him", if you prefer...).

κλῦθί μοι and κλῦθί μευ depend on the edition you're consulting. West prints μοι. (He comments this problem of κλῦθί μευ/μοι in his edition's preface on p. XXXII but I don't understand everything as it's in Latin).

In his commetary of Iliad I, note on line 37, Simon Pulleyn claims that manuscripts in general can have either μευ or μοι after κλῦθί, and that somebody called Meier-Brügger has argued that μοι might actually be a an archaic enclitic genitive, and goes on to quote a Vedic parallel.

453a is apparently a papyrus, but I can't make out for sure what "r" stands for. "v. Praef. III 10." refers to the page in the preface I mentioned above. "deprec. sch" could mean that actually μοι isn't in the text of 453a (or both 453a and "r"?), but rather something we know to be a variant only because a scholiast in those texts condemns it - am I on the right track? But do papyri have scholia? Or are the sch(olia) disctinct from 453a and r?

I don't know how regular this contraction is in Homer, but certainly it existed at least for some -αω verbs in the present, since we have parallel forms like ὁράω and ὀρόω, the latter arising from a metrically lengthened contracted ὁρῶ.

Yes a difficult exercise but a good one, though no-one could blame you for getting stuck on these particular forms. Don't be fooled by Qimmik's "very learned," by the way. I'm a rank amateur at this sort of thing, and too lazy to check up on anything I write here, which could be quite off the mark. Others may have more authoritative explanations.

But to follow up on the irrelevant dat./gen. question and what West says about it, since it does have bearing on the reliability of the medievally transmitted Homeric text and on West's editing principles, so fundamentally different from van Thiel's. He makes the point that after κλῦθι or κέκλυτε variation between μευ and μοι is frequent (sc. in the manuscript tradition), but "it's not credible that the poet said now this now the other." "If you prefer the genitive, it should be written μευ or rather με’" (i.e. elided μεο), he continues (gratuitously: he already covered this at xxii). But he argues for the dative since it seems to be the older construction and was liable to displacement by the ordinary genitive. He adds some bibliography, incl. Meier-Brügger.

The argument seems to me a good one, if one buys into desiderating Homeric consistency, which I'm not sure I do. The ancient manuscripts here and elsewhere tend strongly to support the dative, it seems (West gives refs to this passage and also A451 E115 K278 and T101). That's what I'd build a case on; the fact that the later manuscripts give the ordinary genitive counts for less. And I note that the Odyssey scholia seem consistently to have read μοι. On the other side is the scholium on this Iliad passage (West's "sch", not connected with the papyrus but transmitted in a few medieval manuscripts), which explicitly prescribes genitive not dative (hence μοι "deprec(avit) sch"), and neatly adduces τοῦ δ’ ἔκλυε in verse 40 in validation. It's one of the bT or so-called "exegetical" scholia, though it reads more like an Aristarchan one, being text-critical in nature (hence West's "sch (Ar?)", no doubt). If it is in fact an "exegetical" scholium it could well be taking tacit issue with an Aristarchan preference for the dative, a preference overridden by the tradition as with so many of Aristarchus' preferences, while if it is in fact Aristarchan then his (mistaken?) preference for the genitive eventually prevailed. It would be in line with Aristachus' critical practice if he took τοῦ δ’ ἔκλυε as dictating the analogous genitive with κλῦθι.

"r" will be for "recentior", i.e. a late manuscript not normally cited. ("rr" is standard for "recentiores.") Pretty worthless, but evidencing the non-universality of the genitive in medieval times.w44 is a quotation in a papyrus of magic, tt are the testimonia (listed in West's upper register), Z is a 9th-cent. manuscript of an earlier Homeric glossary (the so-called "scholia minora," also known as the D-scholia [though nothing to do with the manuscript labelled D]). Ω, all-important, is a shorthand designation of the consensus of all the main medieval manuscripts of the poem (from 10th cent. on).

EDIT. This posted before I saw Paul's latest. Yes we have to bring δαμαᾳ into this. But how? Would that be diectasis from δαμᾷ rather than the reverse (contraction)? Gotta go.

Of course, West thinks Book 10 was written by "someone else" and brackets it in its entirety, so he doesn't bother trying to rewrite K284. Even if somehow not part of the "original" Iliad--whatever that was--this verse shows that the genitive construction was in circulation at a very early period.

The Odyssey mss. have both κλῦθί μοι and κλῦθί μευ. Van Thiel reads μευ at B229 but μοι at Δ762 and Z324.

The examples from Aeschylus and Sophocles have μου, even in West's edition, without any recorded variants in the editions I looked at (Aesch.: West's Teubner and Page's OCT; Soph.: Lloyd-Jones and Wilson OCT). (In Euripides Hippolytus the relevant passage is bracketed by Diggle).

So I think μευ is preferable at A37, where the overwhelming weight of the mss. read μευ. That's the way I've been reading it since about 1965, and I'm not going to change now.

This is just another example of West's perverse attempt to normalize the text of the Iliad to read the way he thinks some specific 7th century individual who he believes wrote the poem must have written it. Don't get me started on West's Iliad.

Of course, West thinks Book 10 was written by "someone else" and brackets it in its entirety, so he doesn't bother trying to rewrite K284. Even if somehow not part of the "original" Iliad--whatever that was--this verse shows that the genitive construction was in circulation at a very early period.

Good point (and obviously not one that West would contest).

The Odyssey mss. have both κλῦθί μοι and κλῦθί μευ. Van Thiel reads μευ at B229 but μοι at Δ762 and Z324.

Well he would wouldn't he?

The examples from Aeschylus and Sophocles have μου, even in West's edition, without any recorded variants in the editions I looked at (Aesch.: West's Teubner and Page's OCT; Soph.: Lloyd-Jones and Wilson OCT). (In Euripides Hippolytus the relevant passage is bracketed by Diggle).

But how good evidence for Homer is 5th-century Athenian tragedy?

So I think μευ is preferable at A37, where the overwhelming weight of the mss. read μευ.

i.e. you follow van Thiel in following the vulgate. Depends how you weigh manuscripts, of course.

That's the way I've been reading it since about 1965, and I'm not going to change now.

Rarely has resistance to change been so eloquently defended! (Dare I say mumpsimus?)

This is just another example of West's perverse attempt to normalize the text of the Iliad to read the way he thinks some specific 7th century individual who he believes wrote the poem must have written it. Don't get me started on West's Iliad.

OK, won't!

Why didn't West rewrite A43 to read τωι δ’ ἔκλυε?

I guess he has some respect for the tradition. Either that or he didn't want to incur your further wrath.

δέχθαι is a strange form, which I take to be present, equivalent to δέχεσθαι (middle in form, active in meaning). Pharr apparently takes it as aorist, but I can't imagine how to explain it as aorist. Homer has other comparable forms, which seem to point to an athematic equivalent of δέχομαι (i.e. without the -ο-).

Chantraine agrees with you. He notes that the form δέχαται in M147 guarantees the existence of an athematic present *δέγμαι, although he mentions that some have tried to explain δέχθαι as an aorist.

But how good evidence for Homer is 5th-century Athenian tragedy?

It suggests that the genitive was idiomatic with κλῦθί by the 5th century. These passages from tragedy may well be reminiscenses of Homeric passages, and may hold a clue to how texts of Homer read in the 5th century.

But since we really have very little idea when the Homeric poems were composed or the processes that resulted in the text that has come down in the ms. tradition, in the absence of strong ms. evidence for μοι--in fact, there is only very weak ms. evidence--in my view editors shouldn't tamper with the tradition.

There's always the possibility that at some point a new understanding of how the Homeric poems came into existence will validate--or refute--the received text. But the received text is all we have to go on, so editors shouldn't tamper with it. In fact, even though variant readings are shown in the apparatus (and West's apparatus is very scrupulous, maybe the most scrupulous ever), tampering with the received text on the basis of unprovable preconceptions about the history of the text could obscure some potential insights that haven't occurred to anyone yet.

And, besides, maybe just because I've always heard μευ at A37, μοι completely obliterates the magic of this passage for me.

But I can't say I've read and considered the evidence adduced by the authorities cited by West.

The really important question is, what's wrong with me that I even care about alternative pronouns in a line of Homer, both of which are metrically acceptable and mean exactly the same thing?

Thank you all for the answers. Though I must say that you scary me a little with this moi/meu discussion thing.

I see that contractions are not the only phenomenom that may explain strange forms, so I changed the title of the thread. Next time I will try to apply explinations like metrical lengthening and try to find out possible athematic forms to explain irregular forms like these ones. Also I will check another editions besides the text as it appears in Pharr's book to see what foot notes have to say.

By the other hand, I will follow the advice that you give to me (but may be do not want to apply yourself =) ) and try to go ahead and appreciate Homer without loose my mind with these problems... at least for now.

Addendum: I guess the point of West's citation of the scholiast on A37 is that the reading μοι must have been circulating more widely in antiquity than the manuscript tradition bears witness to, because otherwise the scholiast wouldn't have condemned it. So maybe there is more support for it than I was willing to concede. But the prevalence of τοῦ/τῶν δ᾽ ἔκλυε suggests that the genitive isn't out of place here.

Interesting thread. For me, the genitive has always made sense giving its usual accompaniment of certain verbs of sense. Also I find it interesting given what seems to be a protracted "struggle" between the genitive and dative in most Indo-European languages and the fact that in Greek the genitive would finally kill off the dative and absorb its functions.

I took the plunge--I spent an exorbitant amount of money to gain access to Meier-Brügger's contribution to o-o-pe-ro-si (a Festschrift for E. Risch with a Linear B Title) on De Gruyter's website.

According to M-B, who cites Wackernagel and others, enclitic μοι originally functioned both as a genitive and as a dative form. This was inherited from Proto-Indo-European. (Cf. Π 531: ὅττί οἱ ὦκ᾽ ἤκουσε μέγας θεὸς εὐξαμένοιο.) Enclitic μευ, a Greek innovation, replaced genitive μοι over time. The question is, where did the composer of the Homeric poems fit into this process of replacement? (M-B seems to assume a single poet for each poem.)

Elsewhere in Homer, μευ generally prevails in the mss., but with κλῦθί, and to a lesser extent, κέκλυτέ, the ms. evidence fluctuates.

His conclusion--based on an examination of all the relevant passage in Homer and the ms. authority for each:

The Homeric poet clearly used the genitive form μευ, even with κέκλυτε. But it's probable that with κλΰθι and κλΰτε, he used genitive μοι in formal, solemn, archaizing contexts. This genitive μοι appears in Ε 115; Κ 278; β 262; δ 762; ζ 324, 239 and it's also likely in A 37 and 451. At ο 172 it's probable that the poet wrote μευ. In h. Apoll. 334 κέκλυτε μοι is probably under the influence of κλϋθί μοι.

So maybe I ought to concede that West knows more than I do about A 37 and withdraw my comment on mwh's previous post.

See? I'm not completely closed-minded, even when critically important issues are at stake.

Last edited by Qimmik on Wed Jan 01, 2014 6:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Whether enclitic μοι was originally a genitive or a dative, I wonder whether the poet still felt it was a dative. LSJ: κλύω, II, has a couple of examples with dative that are not enclitic, among them Il. 24.335:

Without anything to back this up, I don't think it's impossible to think that "Homer" used both κλῦθί μοι and κλῦθί μευ. I could even imagine they have a shade of difference in meaning, perhaps κλῦθί μοι "lend your ear to me" and κλῦθί μευ "hear this request from me", or something of the sort - the difference is of course minimal.

Qimmik wrote:I took the plunge--I spent an exorbitant amount of money to gain access to Meier-Brügger's contribution to o-o-pe-ro-si (a Festschrift for E. Risch with a Linear B Title) on De Gruyter's website.

See? I'm not completely closed-minded when important issues are at stake.

I'm happy to see we agree what sort of things are really important in life!

Meh, apart from the Baumbach, Bartonek and Killen contributions I don't remember rating anything in that book very highly. The books cover and its title look so damn promising...if I recall the one in the library is bound in a subtle green hard cover with the Linear-B in gold.

If I never see anything Mycenaean in my life again I'll be happy, bar a few exceptions the field is a wonderful example of incompetence. If I honestly start ruminating on it properly I do get physically very, very, angry. I mean thymos in my chest biting itself with anger, anger.

So here's how I see it:κλῦθί μοι is a prehomeric prayer formula, an archaism in the Homeric epics. By Homer's time (never mind when, say late 8th) the verb was ordinarily attended by genitive, unequivocal genitive, but κλῦθί μοι was a fixed phrase and persisted as such (also in lyric and tragedy, witness the instances Qimmik cites from M-B), the μοι now registering as dative and archaic. It's an embedded fossil, a linguistic equivalent of the boar's tusk helmet. Inevitably over time the dative got replaced by the regular genitive; no doubt both forms were in use simultaneously, maybe even from the start. I shouldn't think any properly semantic distinction was felt; the loss of the dative would reduce its sollemnity (like using "your" in "Hallowed be thy name"), but I'm sceptical of M-B's attempt to differentiate according to context or attestation, the vagaries of the tradition being what they are.

The remarkable thing is that μοι managed to keep a toe-hold in the tradition (and a strong toe-hold at that, in antiquity) rather than being obliterated entirely. That being so, it would be wrong for modern editors to complete the normalizing process by eliminating it.

Yes, you're probably right that κλῦθί μοι was fossilized by "Homer's" time. M-B, if I'm reading him correctly, leaves open the possibility that μοι may still have been in competition with μευ in the Homeric era, in "solemn" contexts, but I think you're right that it's more likely that κλῦθί μοι was more or less fossilized by that time. M-B doesn't provide any instances of genitive μοι with verbs other than κλύω. But the picture is complicated by instances of κλύω with the dative such as Il. Ω335, cited by Paul. There are just a few of these (Theognis, Solon), and perhaps they were influenced by a misinterpretation of the fossilized κλῦθί μοι as dative.

At A37, at least, and perhaps elsewhere, too, the weight of the mss. is in favor of μευ. So normalizing the text in those passages would involve replacing μευ by μοι, rather than the other way around, wouldn't it?

Well, I'd say not. The normalization throughout the tradition was unquestionably in the direction of μοι to μευ. Utrum in alterum? And I don't have such faith in the tradition as to discriminate among the various occurrences of κλυθι μοι/μευ according to what the manuscripts happen to dish up at any particular place. The Homeric papyri have destroyed that faith.

But if you want to take A37 in isolation, what do we know? We know that both μοι and μευ were in circulation already in (probably) Alexandrian times and that someone (maybe Aristarchus) was pushing for μευ instead of μοι. We know that our only ancient manuscript of the passage gives μοι. We also know that μευ, which enjoyed wide currency in Roman times, eventually succeeded in driving out μοι entirely. Quelle surprise. Where, then, does the weight of the evidence for the early period fall? With μοι, surely, and an editor who opts for μοι here cannot properly be accused of "tampering with the text" (a prejudical phrase we would be better off without, it seems to me).

There may be room for argument over whether μοι should be printed everywhere with κλῦθι, when μευ may also have been current from a very early date. But I wouldn't call that normalization so much as denormalization, in accordance with the utrum in alterum principle. It was the reciters and the copyists who normalized μοι to μευ, the genitive being the normal construction with such verbs.

That said, if we want a text closer to what most listeners and readers over two millennia have known (including us), we'll prefer the less pristine μευ. The ideal might be a text that changed each time we looked at it.

To summarize: The 2d century CE papyrus shows that μοι was in circulation in the Roman period, and could just as likely have reflected an older reading as it might represent a "normalization" from κλῦθι μοι elsewhere in the Iliad. But the evidence of the scholiast is even more telling: the fact that someone thought it important to specifically reject μοι in favor of μευ here strongly suggests that μοι was in wider circulation, and probably at a much earlier period, in antiquity, and we don't know on what basis that person preferred μευ--maybe merely because they thought κλῦθι required the genitive and without the benefit of historical linguistics didn't know that μοι was a prehistoric genitive. And we have reason to believe that μοι is the earlier form, and it appears elsewhere with κλῦθι in a fossilized expression.

I have to concede that you've thought this through much more carefully and knowledgeably than I did. You've convinced me that "an editor who opts for μοι here cannot properly be accused of 'tampering with the text,'" and I regret having rashly used that phrase.

Personally, I still might cling to μευ here simply because that's the reading I knew until West came out with his text about 15 years ago, and at that point I was already too old to change (yes, mumpsimus, exactly, but I'm not publishing a critical edition, so I'm free to prefer readings on irrational grounds). The beginning of the Iliad tends to ring in my ears because I've set out to read it in its entirety so many times, but only a handful have been successful.

You call yourself a "rank amateur" here, but if that's true of you, then I'm a hopelessly superficial dilettante. If my suspicions are correct, you know a lot more about these things than you admit , but that still doesn't elevate me to the level of "rank amateur."

Last edited by Qimmik on Fri Jan 03, 2014 11:14 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Well, there must be different degrees of rankness, as far as amateurs go. I'm sure I'm in a very different league than either of you! I'm just an autodidact who likes Homer.

I believe everything you're saying here, mwh.

Out of curiosity, I checked and couldn't find a single instance of plural κέκλυτε μοι in the Iliad; unless I seriously misunderstood West's critical apparatus, they're all conjectured by van Leeuwen. And if van Thiel's apparatus can be trusted on this, the Odyssey hasn't κέκλυτε μοι either; there's a variant κέκλυτε δὴ νῦν μοι at least at Od. 2.25, but that's hardly the exact same formula.

Now I don't know if this has any importance, but to me κέκλυτε μοι looks like a much more speculative restoration than the singular κλῦθί μοι, which must be a prehomeric prayer formula, like you say.

Amateurs are the true scholars. And Paul and Qimmik take the trouble to go checking things out – and are shamingly gracious into the bargain. But I truly am an amateur when it comes to historical linguistics, the original topic here - and in pretty well everything else. I'm completely self-taught in Homer too. I can't pull "rank." It's only by flying under the protective flag of anonymity that I can perpetrate atrocities such as "deprec(avit)."

I was going to write more, on the points at issue, but Qimmik's post is changed from when I first saw it, in the fashion of my ideal Iliad, plus I'm out of time. I'll just say I have nothing against anyone clinging to μευ, so long as they don't go lambasting anyone who doesn't. κλυθι μευ's been in the Homeric text a whole lot longer than κλυθι μοι ever was. Incidentally (going back a bit), I wouldn't say that μοι was "misinterpreted" as dative. In historic Greek it was dative. So often you get people saying what things "really" mean when they only meant that in pre-homeric times. Words mean what people take them to mean, that should be axiomatic – hence the importance of things like Apollonius Sophista and the D-scholia, to tell us actual meaning of Homeric words. But I digress. - I'll be away from these boards for a while.

As mwh noted, I changed my previous post, in which I unconditionally capitulated to the force of mwh's logic. I had originally written that I was persuaded that κλῦθι μοι was circulating in antiquity at A37 by the scholiast's rejection of that reading (possibly on the authority of Aristarchus) for opaque reasons that may or may not have been valid, but that I wasn't competent to assess the "weight" that should be give to the 2d century CE papyrus that also reads μοι here.

Of course, it's completely wrong to assign a "weight" to the papyrus here: the papyrus is just as valid as the scholiast as evidence that μοι was an ancient reading at A37. Even if the papyrus was the work-product of the most careless, ignorant scribe in the entire history of paleography (although from another thread, it looks like the scribe of the codex Bezae might be entitled to claim that honor), the possibility can't be ruled out that the reading in question represents a textual tradition that deserves to be taken just as seriously as the traditional text, which reads μευ here for reasons we can't fathom.